As part of the run up to Nov 30, there'll be a series of articles on Facebook and its technology. I have made my decision. Maybe the information will help inform you.
"You Are the Object of a Secret Extraction Operation"
- By Shoshana Zuboff
Dr. Zuboff is a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”
"Facebook is not just any corporation. It reached trillion-dollar status in a single decade by applying the logic of what I call surveillance capitalism — an economic system built on the secret extraction and manipulation of human data — to its vision of connecting the entire world. Facebook and other leading surveillance capitalist corporations now control information flows and communication infrastructures across the world.These infrastructures are critical to the possibility of a democratic society, yet our democracies have allowed these companies to own, operate and mediate our information spaces unconstrained by public law. The result has been a hidden revolution in how information is produced, circulated and acted upon. A parade of revelations since 2016, amplified by the whistle-blower Frances Haugen’s documentation and personal testimony, bears witness to the consequences of this revolution."
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"Why Facebook won’t let you control your own news feed"
"In at least two experiments over the years, Facebook has explored what happens when it turns off its controversial news feed ranking system — the software that decides for each user which posts they’ll see and in what order, internal documents show. That leaves users to see all the posts from all of their friends in simple, chronological order.Both tests appear to have taught Facebook’s researchers the same lesson: Users are better off with Facebook’s software calling the shots.The internal research documents, some previously unreported, help to explain why Facebook seems so wedded to its automated ranking system, known as the news feed algorithm. That system is under intense public scrutiny."
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Zuboff tells a scenario that is unfortunately absolutely current and not futuristic about the consequences of the digital revolution we are living. An indication is an invitation to resume a path of new awareness of oneself and of one's ability to act and to break that condition, already defined by Manuel Castells of informed disorientation" or to rebel against this progressive state of voluntary servitude.
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